


The Forest of Forgetfulness

by glim



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Dreams, Hurt Steve Rogers, M/M, Magic, Memories, Quests, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 17:43:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19339426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: Seven years ago, as captain of the queen's guard, Steve led his men into the darkling forest at the edge of the kingdom. There was a beast, the people said, a many-headed beast that could devour whole villages and never show remorse. A beast that crept out of the forest and sunk its insidious claws into the very heart of the kingdom.To save that heart, Steve had lost his own.





	The Forest of Forgetfulness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [debwalsh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/debwalsh/gifts).



> Written for the Captain America Reverse Bang 2019, featuring gorgeous artwork by Deb Walsh. Thank you so much for the artwork that inspired this fic and for being so lovely to work with! 
> 
> Thank you also to the mods for putting together this event! And to r00bs_teacup for reading through drafts and for encouragement.

A light glimmers at the edge of the forest, mercurial and silver-quick. It flickers between the leaves of the trees and skips over the uneven earth, lingers for a moment, then disappears. 

Steve stands at the edge of the forest, too, and tries to catch the sliver of light in the palm of his hand. Every time he takes a step closer to the trees, the light flickers away from him, and taunts him closer to the gloom. 

And every time he feels a shiver crawl up his spine, silver-quick and silver-cold. 

He's been here before; he's been here so many times before, carried hence in dreams. Yet even in his dreams he knows this place: the forest by the village, half a summer's hour walk away from his mother's doorstep, half a summer's hour walk back as the sun begins to set behind his back. 

In the forest of his memory, a cool creek runs between the trees and the water tickles between his toes and against his ankles; a secret grotto, tucked a few minutes away from the creek, sleeps lazily under the summer canopy of leaves and scattered sunlight. In the forest of his memory, Bucky chases Steve from the creek to the grotto, wraps an arm around his waist and tumbles Steve to the ground, laughing against Steve's neck as they fall to the grass. 

His eyes are the same silver-blue of the stream when the sun catches them at just the right angle and Steve imagines kissing Bucky will be like drinking from the stream: slow and cool, relief washing through him after so much yearning. He imagines that Bucky's fingers against his bare skin will cool the warmth that simmers inside Steve whenever they're close. 

Perhaps he's imagined it too long, wished for it too hard, wanted it too much. 

In the forest of his dreams, the silver light flickers just beyond Steve's reach, tempting him closer with a wavering vision, with a false dream that's similar enough to his memories to make him want to follow the light. 

It's not the same forest. 

Steve's heart breaks every time he realizes it; every time he shivers because the sun is not quite bright enough and the air not quite warm enough. His heart folds in on itself and his hand reaches for the pommel of his sword. 

It's not the same, he thinks, and swallows back the painful tightness in his throat. 

The silver light scatters like ice through the leaves and hangs on the blades of grass, weighing them down. Steve turns, ready to draw his sword, ready to walk into the forest at the first sound or movement, the first stirring of life beyond the treeline. 

It's the not same forest, he knows, because if it were the same, he'd hear the tripping of water over pebbles, he'd feel the rush of the breeze, and he'd see the sun ripple gold and warm between the leaves. 

If it were the same, Bucky would be two steps behind him and his arm would catch Steve around the waist, his lips would press warm and eager behind Steve's ear, and he'd tumble Steve to the forest floor. 

* * * 

"There's nothing to find there," Peggy says and refuses to look at Steve. She stabs green thread through cambric, pricking out leaves and branches against the fabric. 

"Peggy, if there's anything, any trace--" Steve starts, then lowers his head and sighs. 

The queen's chambers are quiet and bright in the early spring morning, the scent of dew and new grass rising through the opened windows. Outside, the castle comes to life, noise ringing through the courtyard, the clop of horses hooves and the rise and fall of voices.

Steve stands at one of the windows, already dressed to ride, but he gives a nod of resignation when Peggy gives him a sharp glance. 

"I have to go." 

"Leave us, Jenny," she murmurs to her maidservant, then places her needlework aside when the girl leaves. Peggy watches Steve for a few moments, her expression stern at first, then softer and more concerned as he paces from the window to her seat. "Steven, don't do this." 

"Seven nights, Peg," Steve mutters. He pauses by the window where Peggy sits, then drops to his knees and rests his hands atop hers, atop the needlepoint leaves that seem to shiver in a silvered light. "That dream has to mean something." 

"It means... it means you have to stop reading dream lore and take your knights out for drills and maneuvers." Her fingers tremble when she pushes Steve's hands aside to pick up her embroidery again. 

"They're your knights, your majesty," Steve says, then, more softly: "You knew him, too." 

When Peggy glances aside and the morning sun catches her profile, the rush of memory comes over Steve once more. Peggy, when she'd been nothing more than the daughter of the lord his mother worked for, and the long summer afternoons she'd spend with Steve and Bucky. She'd brought Steve books the winters he was too sick to leave his mother's house and promised he'd be her first knight should she ever become queen. 

Steve had sworn to keep her safe; he'd sworn to keep them both safe with the kind of heart and dedication only a boy could claim. He'd meant every word, every feverish oath and tear-choked promise, even when all he could taste was dust and blood after he lost Bucky. 

He loved him and he _lost_ him. 

Resting his forehead against his clasped hands, Steve closes his eyes. He sees silver light and wind-ruffled leaves, Peggy, before her father took her from the village, and Bucky... always Bucky, his bright eyes and his easy smile, how both softened just before he leaned in to kiss Steve for the first time, the flick of his hair in the wind the last time he turned over his shoulder before walking into the darkling forest. 

Before he can say anything more, Peggy touches Steve on the shoulder and meets his gaze when he raises his head. An odd expression clouds her eyes and Steve wants to ask if dreams or memories haunt her, too. 

"Go then," Peggy says. "Go, but you have to come home, Steve. You have to bring him home."

* * *

Walking into the forest is like falling asleep, like being pulled beneath the surface of the cool creek water and not wanting to come back up for air.

The sensation only lasts a moment, but Steve lives a lifetime in that moment, one of underwater dreams and summer memories that tug on his senses. He thinks, perhaps, the silver light skirts his senses, makes them dull when they should be sharp, gilds his mind and leaves him numb and heavy. 

He takes one step into the forest, then another, his feet heavy and his senses dull, then the feeling fleets, and Steve walks into the cool green world around him. 

It _feels_ like the same forest. 

It feels so much like the same forest that Steve has to shake his head and swallow back the hot rise of tears in his throat. 

"Buck?" he says anyway, because what else would he say, it's the only name, the only word that would rise to his lips in this strange-familiar place. 

A light flickers around him, catching the glint of his armor, and then disappears into the forest. The air shimmers, too, reshaping itself around Steve until he feels something catch in his heart. 

"Bucky, no, it's _me_. It's Steve." 

The forest shimmers again. 

Steve reaches for his sword, keeps his hand on the pommel, but lets the weapon rest in its sheath. His body tenses and he takes another step into the forest, grateful he left his horse to wait at the treeline, and then another step, grass yielding to moss as he continues. 

Steve's dreams led him here and his dreams will guide him. He's walked this path for seven nights now, a seven-fold fantasy that he will find the love he lost and fight to bring him home. Just as in his dreams, he knows he needs to walk past the creek, past the grotto, until he meets another knight. 

Yet, in his dreams, Steve never fights the other man to the death. He always wakes as the sword pierces his side, after the clash of metal on metal rings through the forest and frights the sky above them. 

Today, Steve meets the man and stands before him. His mind automatically registers that they fight on equal terms, well-matched and strength and skill. 

Well, they would be; they trained together, after all. They trained each other. 

The forest shimmers again and, for a moment, so does the knight that stands before Steve. His black armor seems to be only a shadow that hovers over him, and his shield, a red star on a sable field, seems to flicker to the same azure and argent as Steve's. 

"Don't make me do this," Steve says, his voice only a whisper, yet echoes through the green canopy and he knows he accepted the challenge long before he set foot in the forest.

* * *

"Don't move, you're hurt..."

Steve shifts on the cot and holds a hand to his side when he feels the pain lance through him. Every part of his body hurts, a dull ache that sinks into his bones, but the pain in his left side and sharp and raw. Breathing hurts, moving hurts, but not as much as the realization of how he received the wound. 

"I'm dreaming," he says, voice thick and slow, and raises his head. "God, _Bucky_." 

The man--Bucky, it has to be Bucky, he has the right eyes and the right mouth and the touch of his fingertips on Steve's skin is right--frowns, then nods, and reaches up to press a cool cloth to Steve's forehead. 

"All right, then: Bucky. I'm Bucky," he says in an even voice, but a frown creases his forehead and dims his eyes. "Who's Bucky?" 

"You're the Knight of the Forest." Steve's lips form the words as if he reads from a script, like one of the players that come to the castle every spring. 

The man nods. "I wasn't always..." He frowns again and looks at Steve, touching the painful bruise that blooms on Steve's cheekbone. His eyes search for something in Steve's face as his touch maps over his skin, stroking the bruise once more when Steve winces. "Maybe, once, I wasn't." 

A strange, hollow sadness settles in Steve's chest and he turns from the touch though every part of his body yearns for the contact. He's not Bucky if he doesn't remember, if he can't reach through the cloud of dreams and memories and recall the shape of his own name on his lips. 

"You were called James, once," Steve says, then thinks, perhaps only once. He'd been Jamie at home as long as Steve knew him, and then Bucky after he and Steve settled into the warmth and closeness between them. 

"James, then." The man-- _James_ \--gives another nod, slow and considering. "I hurt you." 

"You didn't mean to," Steve replies and he cannot hide the tremble in his voice. "You couldn't have known." 

James lowers his eyes. He sits with Steve for a few moments, then rises from the side of the cot. He's still in chainmail and light armor, his dark hair pulled back off his face. When he stands, Steve catches a glimpse of silver and the soft whir of clockwork, both the flicker of light and sound fleeting. He tries to sit up on the cot, gets caught out by the pain in his side, and sinks back to the blankets and pillows as he chokes back a gasp of pain. 

"You're the captain of the Queen's Guard." He motions towards Steve's sword and shield, both laid neatly by the small fireplace. "I know that much. Here," James says when Steve tenses in pain, "drink this, it'll help you sleep." 

He gives Steve water to drink, then a bittersweet cordial, cloying and thick, that muddles Steve's senses as it dulls the pain. His touch is gentle and precise, as if he does remember, as if somewhere, tucked in the back of his mind, is the familiar pattern: Steve sick in the middle of winter and Bucky touching his forehead for fever; the two of them pressed close in the cool green of the grotto; Bucky sprawled on his bed in the knights' barracks, chest bare and eyes heavy-lidded, waiting for Steve to join him. 

Steve tries to swim to the surface of his senses, but gets pulled down by sleep and pain and he sinks, down and down and _down_ , into the blurred warmth of his own memories.

* * *

A week passes in a haze of sleep and pain and memory, all crowded over Steve's senses like the thick fog of an autumn morning. Every time he wakes, he fights to dispel the fog and see more clearly, hoping each time he'll find Bucky in the midst of it.

In some small ways, he does: 

When James hands him a cup of water or weak wine on the first day, their fingers brush and a warmth sparks between them. James draws back and eyes Steve, the expression on his face wary, and passes the cup into his hand as quickly as possible. 

On the second day, his touch is more careful and deliberate, but by the third and fourth days, he presses the cup into Steve's hand and then presses his own hand over Steve's. They linger in the moment, hands touching, and Steve knows he could linger here forever in the vague haze of fever and pain as long as he could find Bucky in the silver-blue glint of this man's eyes. 

The flicker only lasts a moment, though, and Steve takes the cup of watered wine and lowers his gaze as he drinks. 

When he's able to sit up comfortably on the on the fourth day, Steve runs his hand over the bandages on his side and tests the wound. He winces at the pain, still raw-edged and sharp, and his body tenses against it. 

"Here, let me. I'll change the dressing for you." James sit next to him and holds the metal hand to Steve's side, cool and gentle, and keeps his palm steady until Steve relaxes. "You heal quickly." 

"I'm lucky, I guess. I wasn't always this..." He motions towards his chest and the injured side.

"No," James agrees, "you weren't. But you fought me on the bridge the same as you always have. Too stubborn by half," he says, wonder in his voice and memory tripping through his words. "Too stubborn. And you let me do this--" 

Steve has to look away because that's Bucky's voice and Bucky's eyes, and the indignation that replaces the fondness in his expression is so much like Bucky that it squeezes Steve's heart. 

In his fevered dreams they fought at the forest bridge, and in his dreams, Bucky's sword pieced Steve's side, seven times, seven nights in a row, and Steve knows the part he plays. He meets the Knight of the Forest, he falls by his sword, and the ending has to be spun from this moment. His dreams had always ended with the bite of metal into his flesh and canopy of leaves and light spinning above his head. 

Steve thinks of leaves pricked bright green against a cambric field. 

"Bucky," he says. His voice is a prayer and a plea. 

James doesn't look up at him but smoothes salve over Steve's side; his fingers have already memorized the movement and he redresses the wound without having to pause. When he does look up, uncertainty and sadness blur the brightness of his eyes.

"That wasn't me," he murmurs.

* * *

On the sixth day, Steve can stand from the cot as long as he holds his hand over his side. He walks to the window of the small home James has in the middle of the forest to gaze out into the cool, green shadows.

Beyond the shelter there's a stream and small grotto. Steve knows this as well as he knows his own heart and in his heart, he can trace the path to the stream and can feel the quiet of the grotto. That knowledge is wrapped in comfort, more akin to the blurry warmth just before waking or falling sleep than to the fog of his dreams. 

The warmth of oblivion and the hazy comfort of leaving the world behind. 

"What magic holds you here?" Steve asks without turning from the window. 

James shifts behind him, then comes to rest a hand on Steve's shoulder. He's dressed Steve in a tunic of his own, left the ties at Steve's wrists and throat loose, so he can slide his hand under the worn linen and rub Steve's shoulder when he tenses. 

Warmth flushes through Steve, his skin heating against the touch and his body easing in closer to James's. If he takes one step closer, his back would press to the other man's chest, close enough to feel the warmth of James's body and the steady thrum of his heart. Steve could tip his head back to rest against his shoulder and then lay his hand above the one that would settle at his hip. 

Something nudges against Steve's mind, against his memories, against the desire that's already warming around his heart. He wants to lean into James's touch and close his eyes, reveling in the familiar feel of skin against skin, of whispered kisses against the nape of his neck. 

"Oh," he sighs, and leans away to look out at the forest once more. 

He thinks of the creek and the grotto, of the soft grass under his bare feet and Bucky's lips tickling kisses against the back of his neck. Of long summer afternoons unwinding around them in a rich tapestry of greens and blues that mellow as the sun sets and the evening pricks the stars silver and gold against an azure sky. 

It feels like the same forest, even though Steve knows it's not. 

"They're your memories," Steve says. "Not mine." 

James's hand tightens on his shoulder and his breath shudders against Steve's neck. Some part of him remembers those long days that threaded through their boyhood; some part of him remembers the creek and their secret green spaces; some part of him remembers _Steve_. 

Clouds gather outside, sudden and black, and the pain in Steve's slide lances through him once more, too sudden for him to stand, and he staggers against James. The hand on his shoulder stops him from falling and when Steve turns to face James, fearful recognition lights his eyes. 

"I'm going to take you home," Steve promises and the sky settles as does the pain in his side.

* * *

The next morning, when the sky still holds the pale, opalescent grey of dawn, Steve rises from the small cot in the corner of the shelter.

Asleep on the floor, James stirs. His dark eyelashes flutter against his pale cheek and for a moment, he is Bucky again, asleep next to Steve in his mama's cottage, the blue of his eyes soft and hazy with sleep when they meet Steve's. Just like he did on those mornings, he smiles when he sees Steve and the warmth in his eyes is so familiar that Steve feels it touch his heart. He slept in his grey tunic and black breeches, his back to the cot, his sword between him and the door. 

Steve wants nothing more than to touch James's cheek and press a soft kiss to his parted lips, murmur a good morning against his mouth, and kiss him again before he rolls his body atop James's to pin him to the floor. The longing comes over Steve in a wave, threatening to overwhelm him the memory of bedwarm limbs and soft kisses. 

"Let's go outside," he says, instead, but doesn't stop himself from crouching down to brush a few strands of hair off James's face. 

James looks up at Steve, the corner of his mouth curling into a tiny smile, and he pulls himself up off the floor in one easy motion. 

"It's early. You're still wounded. If you catch a chill..." James motions towards the hand Steve holds over his side as he stands. "Please don't leave me," he whispers and hangs his head. 

"I won't, never again." Steve lets his breath out in a careful exhale. The wound is more than skin-deep; it's soul deep, the bite of metal as sharp as the bite of memory. 

The woods around them waver in the pale morning light. Like Steve, the forest bears a wound, a tear in the fabric of nature and reality, a hastily recreated memory that sought to put the world back together. 

_Soul deep_ , Steve thinks, and slips his right hand into James's left one, the metal hand, and his touch is as cool as the morning air. 

"Can you take me down to the creek?" Steve asks. 

James looks at him sideways, eyes slanting against the rising sun, and he nods. His hand tightens around Steve's for a few moments before he tugs Steve down towards the creek. 

The trees and leaves and brush jumble around them, an illusion held together by memory and desire, and Steve feels James's hand tighten around his again when the illusion wavers. 

"There shouldn't be a creek," he says, and his voice breaks. 

"Not here," Steve says. He walks James down to the small creek anyway and lets the breeze ruffle over his hair and at the open neck of his tunic. "You took me here, when I was six, and you were seven. I hurt my wrist and you bound it with your tunic," Steve says. 

The wind catches James's hair and scatters it in dark strands over his face and neck. He frowns, pushes it aside, and then frowns again as he studies Steve's face. Another tiny smile curls at the edge of his lips. 

"You... you didn't want to go home to your Ma, said she wouldn't let you out by yourself again. But you weren't by yourself," James adds. 

"No. I never was, not after that." Steve reaches up to thread his fingers through James's hair to touch the side of his face. "When I was sixteen--" 

The magic around them shifts as James's memories shift. His eyes cloud with confusion, then clear, and he leans into the touch of Steve's hand on his face. The calm, quiet of the grotto grows up around them, tinted the gold and green of Bucky's memories. 

With every leaf that unfurls and every glimpse of sunlight that filters through the forest, Steve knows that these memories belong to Bucky. He kept them safe in his heart until they took on a magic of their own and he could not help but shape his world around those memories. 

"--when you were sixteen," James murmurs. "The summer was so hot, we spent every day here that we could, wading through the cool water and when I kissed you--" 

"--you kissed me," Steve echoes James's words and touches his thumb to the corner of James's mouth. "You raced me to the grotto, and you kissed me, Bucky, even though I lost the race." 

When James's eyes fall shut, the magic around them melts and the creek sinks into the forest floor. Steve expects to feel a lonely ache in his chest, expects the world around him to echo that ache, but what he feels is relief. 

"Steve," James says. His eyes look soft when he opens them, sleep-blurred and confused. 

"Yeah... yeah, it's me, Buck." 

He nods a little, pressing his cheek against the palm of Steve's hand. "I tried to remember..." 

"I know. And you _did_. You just had to put those memories somewhere else for a little while." Steve strokes the side of Bucky's face and draws him close to rest his own forehead against Bucky's. 

It's not the same forest, Steve knows, but when he leans in to kiss Bucky for the first time in so many years, it could be any forest. 

They could stand in the soft, green shadows of any forest and it would be the right forest, for every forest would be the same forest as long as he closes his eyes and dwells not in memory, but the closeness and warmth of his love. 

"Bucky," Steve murmurs when they part, and then again into another kiss that attempts to crush the breath from his mouth, "remember who you are." 

Bucky nods and kisses Steve, kisses mouth and his cheek and the bridge of his nose, kisses him the same way he did the first time. 

Sunlight scatters pale gold patterns through the leaves onto the forest floor and with each kiss the wound in Steve's side heals until the only pain he feels is one of sweetness.

* * *

Seven years ago, as captain of the queen's guard, Steve led his men into the darkling forest at the edge of the kingdom. There was a beast, the people said, a many-headed beast that could devour whole villages and never show remorse. A beast that crept out of the forest and sunk its insidious claws into the very heart of the kingdom.

To save that heart, Steve had lost his own. 

Before today, his last memory of Bucky was of him poised, shield cracked on his right arm, still reaching for Steve, fingertips almost brushing, the forest pulling him away from Steve at the last moment. The many-headed beast and the fear in Bucky's eyes, Steve's name on his lips: the last moments they had together. 

In those days, they'd born the same shield, the field azure with stars argent. The beast had taken that away from Bucky, had taken his shield and his arm, a slash of blood red over the white and blue. 

When they return to the small shelter, Steve takes up his shield and hangs it next to those the Knight of the Forest had claimed from everyone he'd fought. He takes up Bucky's instead shield, the cracked shield, azure, three stars argent, and gules slashed over one star. 

The star is the same Bucky bears on his left arm, and Steve will bear that mark now, too, whenever he takes up his own shield. 

"I promised Peggy I'd come home and I promised myself I'd bring you home." Steve draws Bucky against his side and holds him close. "Are you ready?" 

Bucky nods, but hesitates, makes a move like he wants to pull Steve back into the makeshift home he had out here in the forest. 

"I'm not the same, Steve," Bucky says. His eyes are the same, though, and his smile, and the sound of his voice when he says Steve's name. 

"Neither am I. None of us are," Steve adds. He thinks of the clear, running water of the creek and the green shadows of the grotto, of Peggy running out from the manor house to meet Bucky on that last hazy, warm summer day they had together. "Come home, Bucky." 

"Yes," he murmurs and slides his arm around Steve's waist to return the hug and in that moment of warmth and closeness, rediscovers the home they've always offered each other.

* * *

As they walk out of the forest, a mist gathers behind them. Sinister and soft, it touches the tips of Steve's fingers and the nape of his neck. He knows the oblivion it offers: forgetfulness, a refuge of dreams and memories. No wonder Bucky had defended the forest so staunchly as its knight.

When they reach the treeline, his hand still in Bucky's, Steve turns to watch the mist wrap around the forest and he knows the creek is dry, the grotto empty. Yet, Bucky's hand holds his firmly and draws him close. 

They ride home in silence, pressed up close together on Steve's horse, and Steve's heart catches every time Bucky's arms tighten around his waist. By the time they get to the castle, Bucky's face is pale with fatigue, but his eyes are bright with wonder and longing. The wonder remains on his face as their footsteps echo over the flagstones of the courtyard and up the steps to the castle. 

Peggy meets them at the top of the steps, her face flushed with worry. When she sees Steve, she reaches for him, then clasps her hand around Steve's wrist when Bucky comes to stand at Steve's shoulder. 

"Jamie?" She asks, then, when Bucky smiles, her eyes shine with tears. "Your hair, you used to wear it so short, and, oh, your arm--" The tears spill from her eyes when she touches his arm. 

Emotion tightens in Steve's throat, hot and painful, and he knows he'll cry, too, before this day ends. Not over himself, not even over Bucky, but over the time they lost and the years that melted into the mist and the forest's shadows before Steve knew how to find Bucky. 

"Peg, it's all right. I'm all right. I'm home," Bucky says. He looks past her to the rest of the queen's guard that assemble on the castle's steps, the light in his eyes shuttering at the sudden attention. 

"Come. Let's go inside. You need to tell us, Jamie... you need to tell us how we can take care of you." Peggy takes both of Bucky's hands into her own before leading him up the steps. 

Bucky turns to Steve, the smile back on his face, his eyes the light blue of the morning sky. 

"Well, come on, then, Stevie. Come take care of me." 

The tears that Steve thought he would shed come in soft, quick sob that dissolves into a laugh at how familiar Bucky's voice sounds, how long-missed he'd been, and how, now, when Steve reaches for his hand, Bucky's fingers interlace with his own.

* * *

A week after Bucky returns home, a great celebration is held in his honor. In the quiet, dim chapel at the back of the castle he kneels before his queen and captain and pledges his loyalty once more. Light streams through the windows as the sun rises, staining the stone floor green and blue and red and yellow.

Bucky doesn't stand until he and Steve are the only two left in the chapel. At noon, the feast will begin in the great hall, and for the rest of the day, Steve will have to share Bucky. Here, though, amidst the streaming sunlight and the incense that curls from the altar to the ceiling, they are alone. 

"You brought me home. You saved me. Steven," Bucky murmurs, and on his lips, Steve's name is a benediction, a blessing. 

"I'll always save you," Steve replies. "Remember, you saved me first."

* * * 


End file.
